Initial examination of the Need for Chaos (Revised) Scale in German

The term need for chaos refers to an individual’s mindset demonstrating a desire for the destruction of the established order and the societal structures. This novel construct may be of relevance for forensic, legal, and safety matters as well as politics. To measure differences in individuals’ need for chaos, the seven-items NFCChaos Scale was developed in English. Later two items were added to create the recently proposed nine-items NFCChaos-R Scale. In the present study (N = 817), we present German adaptations of the two scales and an initial examination of their psychometric properties. For the German seven-items NFCChaos Scale, we found a two-dimensional structure with the factors enjoyment of destruction and chaos seeking for rebuilding which were strongly and positively interrelated. The data also suggest that the two additional items of the German nine-items NFCChaos-R Scale capture yet another construct (i.e., lacking desire for order). Furthermore, results preliminary indicate sufficient reliability and validity of the German adaptations. Dark personality measures (e.g., dark core, psychopathy), left-wing authoritarian anti-hierarchical aggression, radicalism intention (i.e., the intention to use illegal and violent means for political ends), and the inclination to justify political violence emerged as substantial correlates of the need for chaos in our German-speaking sample.